That £20bn - jam tomorrow

House of Fraser has been given approval by creditors to close 31 of its 59 stores, resulting in up to 6,000 job losses.

news.sky.com/story/house-of-fraser-the-full-list-of-stores-that-will-close-11397211

It is obvious that retailers have faced a perfect storm, having to compete with online offers, social and technological change, but the austerity policies of recent years, combined with the uncertainty over brexit and the threat of tax rises to pay for it, can't have helped.

If the tories couldnt fool most of the people most of the time they wouldnt be in power. So what's new?

If you voted for austerity and voted for a referendum then you voted for Brexit.

It depends what you mean by "the long term" alreadytaken.

In the long term we're all dead.

I cannot believe that brexit could possibly ever be anything other than an unmitigated disaster, but whatever happens the inheritors of Rupert Murdoch, Paul Dacre, Nigel Farage, Aaron Banks et al will probably re-write history.

Whether Brexit can deliver long term remains to be seen but having a government that has the negotiation skill of a 3 year old doesnt help.

Taxes need to rise to pay for better health care, rather than tax cuts to give more money to those who have enough already.

I benefit from conservative tax cuts - still opposed to them and happy to pay for a better health service.

This was an ill-considered statement with no details to back it up, and I felt rather embarrassed for TM as it was announced. There is NO BREXIT BONUS, in fact, there is a Brexit cost, but I know a few on here will still be clinging on to the side of a bus manifesto despite the often repeated facts. The idea of announcing this much needed transfusion of cash into the NHS without being able to explain where the money will come from, or even how much it will be, was foolish in the extreme and backfired badly. One of the more obvious ways of helping the NHS in crisis would be better funding of Social Care which as we all know, would free beds for more patients. We all know this, so why is this not being tackled? Hunt is now in charge of Health and Social Care so why can't he join the dots?

We’re well, down the list of similar countries in terms of how much we spend on health care, number of health care professionals and so on. No one objects to more money being spent I’m sure. It’s money which shouldn’t have been taken away in the first place.

paddyann you may ( or may not) have a suberb service healthwise in Scotland, but here in England we can see that the NHS is under a great strain.Jubilant may be an OTT word but I suspect most people are really pleased that a lot of money will now be poured into our hospitals and health services.

where to start - how about this one www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-budget-cuts-uk-government-conservatives-capital-theresa-may-jeremy-hunt-costs-maintenance-a8211226.html

Then take a look at www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/R143.pdf#page=22

and you'll see that the Blair/Brown government had to give the NHS large increases to make up for years of underfunding beofre the coalition and then Conservative governments than cut it back again.

The " increase" in funding in those years was not enough to keep up with growth in an aging population.

A link please paddyann?

didn't Mrs May take 22billion away from the NHS a few years ago ..or rather her party did.So she's not even replacing what she took and everyone is expected to be jubilant about it ?

It’s good that the Cons party is thinking of raising general taxation. Let’s hope that fair and balanced (why does TM always use two adjectives) will mean heaviest burden on those most able to pay.
The 10 year plan is also good news, tho a bit late to ask for it with yr 1 starting soon. Discussion and consultation could easily take three years...
Good to see emphasis on mental health at last - about time too.
Meanwhile where does this now leave other impoverished services incl and esp education?? Any tax increase left for them?

I wish all my CCG had to care about was the cost of light bulbs or sellotape - they are currently having to pay Virgin Healthcare hundreds of thousands of pounds for not renewing their children’s services contracts. And so are other CCG in the area. I’d love to see what awarding all these private contracts costs - including this latest fiasco, the private providers who have simply walked away from a service before the end of the contract leaving the local trust to pick up the pieces, the admin costs for the NHS in having to go out to tender etetc - but we certainly won’t be able to access most of this information

lemongrove: already there have been many examples of waste right throughout the NHS, small items costing a fortune ( £10 a roll of sellotape, £100 for a lightbulb etc) and many accounting errors, paying a supplier £2,000 instead of £200
This may seem small beer to some, but if this is replicated in all hospitals constantly it adds up to a huge amount. There will be other examples of waste on a larger scale I expect, where practices needs to be changed.

We once had a National Health Service. Now we have a lot of separate trusts, in the name of competition! They all do their own resourcing, and the administrative costs of treating someone in a different trust are high.
I live in Somerset, but my nearest and most acessible, hospital is at Weston, which is in North Somerset. I have mostly got myself registered there for certain ailments, but last week I had to go to the other side of Taunton. And that was lucky, the alternative would be Shepton Mallet. Go check the maps!

hmm, googled it - it's the cost being charged by private contractors that hospitals are forced to use because of the private finance initiative. Always thought that was a daft idea - and that it was followed up by further involving private companies (shakes head in amazement).

Still dislike that being termed as waste in the NHS because it's not something over which most people working for the NHS have any control. Once you sign a daft contract with the private sector you are stuck with it - unless you introduce a windfall tax on their profits.

The government is STILL doing PFI www.gov.uk/government/publications/private-finance-2-pf2 because of cause the private sector is so wonderful.

So the "waste in the NHS" is profiteering by private companies.

Much of the admin waste and overcharging incl lightbulbs presumably came from the Carillion contract, don’t forget.

I heard a consultant on the radio today saying with advances in surgical techniques he can now operate on 85 year olds and they could be discharged after 48 hours but they are still there two weeks later because of lack of social care provision.

The promised money as well as not including social care also does not include increases for public health or capital expenditure. As for taxation increases - devil and detail come to mind. gilly I agree about NI being paid on all earnings regardless of age and I would also remove the cap for the higher paid. However what I would not want is a general increase in NI but an income tax increase which is much fairer.

^ partly due to profiteering from various private companies,^

Wasn't the '£100 lightbulb' actually what the PFI company charged to replace it?

Would you like to give us links to this evidence of wastage, 'lemon'?

It sounds like a lot of money but in percentage terms it is less than the NHS was getting under Labour. The tories introduced cuts which have brought the NHS to crisis point and the current amount promised will only keep it ticking over at the current rate.

Of course, there is nothing at all of a 'Brexit bonus' about this money. May is just trying to spin it. It will be financed solely from taxation and borrowing. The Sky News clip explains:

twitter.com/GuitarMoog/status/1008469763557818378

Caroline Lucas (Green Party) on Twitter:

❌Longest waiting times for years
❌People being treated in corridors
❌NHS Trusts almost £1bn in the red.
❌Nurses forced to use food banks
❌An uncosted plan based on fantasy economic projections.

Yes well done, @Conservatives ???

Yes definitely waste - partly due to profiteering from various private companies, hangovers from the disastrous pfi projects and lack of coordination/ accountability within the organisation. I am sure if you were designing the NHS today it wouldn't look like it does at the moment.

This NHS Brexit Dividend is just to distract us from the Government’s disastrous handling of Brexit.
There is no Brexit Dividend, the Government’s own forecasts are that Brexit will cost the country £15 billion a year over the next several years.
The NHS has been promised about 3.4% extra a year when it needs a minimum of 4% a year and 8 years of underfunding since 2010 means there is a lot to catch up on.
But it’s made headlines and is a useful distraction from the Brexit negotiations and May’s deceitful behaviour over the withdrawal bill amendments.
Not sure if it’s a good idea to keep reminding everyone about the embarrassing Brexit Red Bus and it’s blatantly untrue slogans.

already there have been many examples of waste right throughout the NHS, small items costing a fortune ( £10 a roll of sellotape, £100 for a lightbulb etc) and many accounting errors, paying a supplier £2,000 instead of £200
This may seem small beer to some, but if this is replicated in all hospitals constantly it adds up to a huge amount.
There will be other examples of waste on a larger scale I expect, where practices needs to be changed.

Where is this "waste" I keep hearing still exists in the NHS - specific examples please? There is a lot of bureaucracy related to having to be accountable to the public, but do you really want to remove that and e.g. not have mistakes investigated?

Of course the government's introduction of clinical commissioning groups could be reversed.

The examples I've seen of cutting "waste" are removing services. Some of these are lower priority services but some e.g. some travel vaccines could end up costing the NHS more than we gain.

We pay less for our NHS now than most Western countries and get far more than we deserve from it.

Surely no intelligent person can possibly still believe the red bus lie?